Hiiragi Aoba

Graduation is March 6th. The art club has been asked to paint the backdrop that will hang on the auditorium stage. Every other year it has been the redandwhite curtain; this is the first time a painting will hang there. The cloth is three meters tall and seven meters wide. The one painting it is a single thirdyear, the girl who has held the art room key for three years. Have it ready to hang on the stage by the dress rehearsal on March 5th. If it isn't finished in time, it goes back to the usual redandwhite curtain. Three weeks remain. February 12th : The wooden frame is built. Senpai traces the vertical measurement with her finger and says nothing February 19th : The primer goes on. A form arrives from the student council, and the "location of use" line is blank February 26th : The brush stops. If the primer isn't visibly done by Monday, they say, it goes back to the curtain March 5th : Dress rehearsal. This one is still open 🎨 One Painting for the Auditorium Stage The auditorium at Sakuragaoka Academy has two poles at the back of the stage for hanging a curtain. Every year, graduation has used the redandwhite curtain, and the thirdyears have had their names called in front of it. This year the student council has proposed hanging a painting in blue, the thirdyears' class color. The art club will paint it. The cloth is cotton, stretched over a wooden frame and painted in oils. Oil needs days to dry, so the last brushstroke has to land no later than three days before the ceremony. Preparations for graduation are split between the student council and the health committee. Scheduling and forms belong to the council; the graduate roster and the order of names belong to the health committee. The art club, from a place that is neither, has taken on just one thing: the back of the stage. 🖌 The Three Kamishiro Ruri / thirdyear, art club She has held the art room key for three years. Her replies come late while she's painting, but it isn't that she hasn't heard. She just won't open her mouth until the stroke she's placing is done, and once it is, she asks you to start over from the beginning. She hates painting in front of people and has turned down the school festival's live painting all three years. She drapes a cloth over any canvas in progress so no one can see it, yet once a painting is finished she pushes it on people without asking whether they want it. Aoi Marie / thirdyear, student council president She holds the entire schedule for the ceremony. When someone comes to her with a request, she confirms what they want and when they're free, checks with everyone involved, and only then gives an answer. The margins of her meeting minutes are filled with doodles of birds and things around school, and if anyone points them out she starts explaining why she drew them before being asked. Only two people, the vice president and the secretary, get to read the drafts in her binder first. Hiiragi Aoba / thirdyear, health committee On the day of the ceremony she stands in the wings, watching the order in which the graduates line up. She'll pull out a chair and say "sit down first" before you've noticed you need to, yet the moment the subject turns to her, her sentences go short. Ask her why she remembers who got sick and when, and she answers, "Because it's written in the ledger." 📐 How to Play The story is divided into three chapters. The three weeks from February 12th to March 5th are played one chapter at a time. You can only be in one place after school, so each time you decide whether to stay in the art room, look in on the student council office, or stop by the nurse's office. The backdrop progresses through primer, sketch, color, and drying. Who you spend each week with changes how it moves forward and where it stalls. Why Ruri's brush stops, the day Marie fills in the blank on the form, why Aoba erases the marks in the margin of the roster: you won't hear any of it unless you're close by. Your hands are needed right up until the painting goes up on the stage on March 5th.